$250 vs $29 Lobster Dinner: Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients

Is that a brain?

What am I looking at here?

[light whimsical music]

Hi, I'm Eric, I'm a professional chef,

and these are my $250 lobster dinner ingredients.

[music continues]

Hi, I'm Emily, I'm a home cook,

and these are my $29 lobster dinner ingredients.

[whimsical music continues]

Goodbye, friend.

It's happening again.

It's happening again!

Ah. A new friend.

I got some ideas. I think we're gonna be just fine.

Oh! Oh. [laughs]

Well, that is a different lobster.

[whimsical music continues]

So I was planning on making

a Cantonese-style spiny lobster with garlic butter lo mein.

The star of the show was a spiny lobster

all the way from Florida.

This lobster doesn't have any claws.

[Eric] I had a bottle of Madeira.

Hello. I'll be drinking that later.

Chicken stock, a bunch of vegetables.

We were gonna make a really beautiful lobster reduction.

Got scallion, a celery, a carrot, an onion.

Plus everything I needed to make egg noodles from scratch

so I could make a garlic butter lo mein.

Am I making pasta again?

All served in a lobster sauce

with ginger, guanciale, and Shaoxing wine,

topped with green scallions and crispy shallots.

With Emily's recipe,

we got a lotta stuff you can find

at the grocery store or in your pantry,

but with a little technique,

we can make this stuff really special.

If I had to guess, this would all cost about $34.

[price dings]

Okay. All right. Yeah, pretty close.

If I were gonna guess,

I would say that this would all cost about $267.

[price dings]

Real close.

This is Chef Eric's recipe book,

and this is what I'm gonna be making today.

Cantonese-style spiny lobster with garlic butter lo mein.

I feel a little overwhelmed, I'm not gonna lie. [chuckles]

I guess I'll start with the lobster.

Emily's working with a spiny lobster.

Though the lobster is dead, it is very fresh.

It's a lot more heavily armored

than your typical Maine lobster.

Which is why I have four gloves on. [chuckles]

So Emily, here's how you break down your spiny lobster.

Make sure you have gloves and towels to protect yourself.

You're going to be grabbing the head,

you're gonna be grabbing the tail,

and you're going to be twisting

in opposite directions to separate them.

[lobster snaps] Here we go.

[Eric] We want to clean the head,

so you're going to put your thumbs into the cavity.

You're going to separate the carapace from the body.

Oh god, there's a lot of guts in there. [laughs]

And then once you do that, we're gonna clean them.

We're gonna rinse it, and then remove the gills,

and then split the body in half

so that we can make a nice little stock out of it.

[knife knocks] There we go.

All right, and then the next thing we do

is kind of clean this up for presentation.

[scissors click] Nope. [chuckles] Watch out.

[Eric] You're going to take a knife and bisect the tail.

I don't think I got through the shell,

but that's a start. [chuckles]

I may not be strong, but I'm wily.

[shell crunches]

And then you're going to rinse it.

Rinse the cavity of any viscera.

Well, we're getting somewhere. Garbage.

[Eric] And then you're gonna cut that

into little bite-sized pieces.

That's kind of a bite, right?

All right, there you go.

Spiny lobster and Emily both broken down.

So Emily was planning on doing a lobster dinner

with simply-steamed whole lobster, loaded baked potato,

some rolls, and buttered corn.

I think I'm gonna do things a little differently here.

I'm gonna make grilled lobster with cheddar corn pudding,

extra crispy potatoes, and a bacon crumble.

So this is a Maine lobster,

and I've taken care of it off camera,

and now I'm gonna get ready to cook it.

What we're going to do is break it down

into its individual parts, cook them all at different times,

and then we're going finish them on the grill.

I'm going to skewer the tail to keep it straight.

As you can see here,

the right claw is bigger than the left claw,

and they cook it very different times.

And given that the claw texture is very different

from the tail and the knuckle,

it's really important to get the cooking time correct.

So I didn't salt the water,

and since it's an ocean-faring creature,

it has its own salinity to it.

So it's been about three and a half to four minutes.

I'm gonna take out the tail now,

and I'm gonna take out the small claw,

and shock them immediately in ice water to stop the cooking.

Then I'm gonna let the big claw cook

for about another minute and a half.

And now I'm going to shock this piece as well.

I am going to clean the head here to use for stock.

So, putting my thumbs in at the carapace,

and at the body cavity,

and then separating. [lobster cracking]

And these are the gills,

what are called the dead man's fingers

for whatever reason.

Dead man's fingers, huh? Gross.

They don't impart a good flavor on the stocks,

so I am going to clean them off.

Now I'm going to cut the body in half.

There's a lot of meat in the legs.

We don't want that to go to waste,

so I am going to roast it, and simmer it in a stock.

So first I'm gonna take the meat out of this lobster claw.

Break the hinge downwards,

and then you can extract

a larger feather bone and a smaller one.

Once you've removed the tip,

you can just cut along the back seam here.

This white stuff is just coagulated proteins, albumen.

We can rinse this off,

and kind of brush it off with our hands.

Next up the knuckles.

I'm gonna follow the seam along the elbow,

being careful not to puncture the meat.

And then there's two bits of cartilage.

You just want to gently pull it away from the shell.

And then same thing there,

getting all the little pin bones out.

I've taken my lobster tail out of the ice bath,

I've removed the skewer,

and now I'm gonna split it right down the middle.

I'm just gonna rinse these off.

My lobster's cleaned and ready to go.

All right, so the next thing I need to do

is make a lobster reduction.

Lobster reduction is a very fancy word.

Basically means boiling something

until it's 10 to 20% of its original volume.

[Emily] I think I'm gonna be using this reduction

as kind of like a finishing touch at the end.

All right, so I'm gonna make a lobster cuisson here.

Basically, it's a stock that we're gonna use for cooking.

I'm gonna sear off these lobster bodies.

It's very tempting to mess with it,

but it's important that you don't.

You really only get one shot of caramelizing this.

Oh look, it's starting to turn red,

which is, you know, what I'm looking for.

All right, I'm gonna put in

an itty bitty bit of tomato paste.

I'm just waiting for the tomato paste to darken slightly,

which I think it already has.

And then I'm gonna add in a cup of Madeira.

Madeira is a fortified wine.

[Emily] Into the pot. [liquid sizzles]

Woo!

It's really important to reduce the alcohol beforehand.

If you add it in with your cooking liquid,

it forms an azeotrope,

which is basically a solution of alcohol and water

that will never be able to cook the alcohol out.

If that's a little bit burnt, is that bad?

All right, I think we're looking good here.

I'm gonna add the water,

and just simmer way for about an hour.

All right, it's been about an hour.

We've extracted all the flavor we want outta the lobster,

and now I'm going to strain it here

and reduce this by about 80% so it becomes a little sticky.

It's gonna add a lot of flavor.

This is reduced.

So I'm gonna toss in my vegetables.

I've got onion, celery, ginger, carrots, garlic,

and then also my, woo, chicken stock.

All right, so I'm gonna be on stock duty

for about the next two hours.

So, see ya in a few.

Okay, I've reduced my lobster cuisson.

It's very intensely flavored.

And I'm just gonna add some lemon juice, butter.

Mounting the butter in will give it some richness,

and balance out the flavors.

Mounting butter is adding butter bit-by-bit,

and while it's cold,

to a flavorful base.

You have to kind of coax the water and the fat to get along.

I'm gonna add a little bit of salt.

I think it's gonna add

just like a really nice dimension of flavor

as it caramelizes.

[grinder crunches]

Okay, that's it. Lobster cuisson.

I think that this is like pretty much ready.

So I'm gonna take all the stuff out,

and then keep reducing it. [chuckles]

Feeling good about that.

Okay, I feel like that's ready to strain.

Okay, and now I'm gonna spend another hour reducing this

until it is truly a lobster reduction.

All right, I think that's basically a syrupy consistency.

So I'm gonna cut the heat, and give a little taste.

I'll stir it with the lemon butter,

and then make a call. [laughs]

Woo. Hello.

All right, lobster reduction reduced.

Emily gave me some russet potatoes here.

I think she was gonna do a baked potato

with all the fixin's.

I'm gonna do something a little different here.

I'm going to make some extra crispy potatoes.

I'm gonna peel them, cook them in water,

and roast them in the oven.

I wouldn't waste time trying to perfectly dice potatoes.

They always change shape anyway.

Keeping potatoes in water,

removing them from oxygen so they don't oxidize, turn black.

So I've soaked it in cold water here for a little bit.

Helped to remove some of the excess starch.

You do want some, but there's a ton of excess

when you're working with russets,

so a little bit of a soak can be helpful.

Never really want to boil potatoes, especially russets.

That's going to turn them to complete mush.

When you bring them up from cold,

they cook more evenly because they heat through evenly.

So it helps, just like pasta, to season your cooking water.

So now I'm gonna make a little garnish

of some crispy fried shallots.

Crispy shallots are really challenging

because the timing window

is like literally maybe 30, 40 seconds.

I have not done it before.

You can't really do this by hand.

No one's really consistent enough,

so you gotta use a mandolin.

[ominous music] Okay.

[Eric] By far the most dangerous piece of equipment

in all professional kitchens.

Please be careful.

Don't be a hero, and don't take your eyes off of it.

My potatoes, I would say, are 90% cooked.

I'm going to strain them, and toss them.

When you scruff the potatoes up,

the starch is going to glassify

so you get this really crispy potato with a creamy interior.

I'm gonna season my potatoes up with some oil,

more salt on the outside, pepper.

I've preheated my sheet tray

to give everything a little kickstart.

[potatoes sizzle]

As you can hear, it's hot searing up already.

They're going into a convection oven.

You want the highest fan you can possibly get

moving the heat around 450 Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes.

Oh, my eyes are watering from the shallots.

All right, so the next thing I need to do

is put these on the bottom of this pot here.

Oil just to cover.

And now we wait until it starts changing color.

So the final color you're looking for

is kind of a medium golden brown,

kind of like the color of a croissant.

Any sort of carry over heat

is gonna cause them to over-caramelize,

and taste very bitter.

All right, so I'm just scooping the end

of my fried shallots out.

They look actually pretty good already, I would say.

And adding some salt.

All right, fried shallots ready to go.

So our extra crispy potatoes are outta the oven.

You want to season food while it's hot.

That's the point in which the salt will dissolve readily

with whatever moisture is on the surface.

So my extra crispy potatoes are ready to go.

So this dish includes garlic butter lo mein,

so of course I have to make my own egg noodles.

Garlic-butter noodles, it's a San Francisco thing,

and it's this funny combination of soy sauce, oyster sauce,

as well as Parmesan cheese, and butter.

So you're gonna take all your ingredients,

put them in the stand mixer with a dough hook,

and work it on low for five to 10 minutes.

And then you're gonna bring it together by hand.

All right, I'm just gonna pull this dough out,

put it into a bowl, and then I'm gonna rest it.

So next I'm gonna take this bacon that was given to me,

and I'm going to render it off in the oven.

I'm also gonna toss these dinner rolls with the bacon fat.

And then together we're gonna make a bacon crumble

so I can garnish my lobster dish.

My opinion, it is way better to render bacon in the oven

as opposed to a skillet.

The bacon remains a lot more flat,

and you only really need to turn it once.

Okay, so while the bacon's cooking,

I'm gonna dice these dinner rolls up.

Our bacon is looking really nice and rendered and crispy,

and I'm just gonna take all this rendered bacon fat

and toss our dinner rolls with it.

So now that my dinner rolls are all bacon-greased up,

I'm going right back into the oven.

While my dinner rolls are toasting,

I'm going to chop up my bacon.

And we're just gonna chop it into a fine crumble.

So my dough's been resting,

and now it's time for me to start

the noodlefication process.

You're going to portion it, and start sheeting it.

Start on the widest setting of the pasta roller,

and just work that rectangle through.

And you are gonna keep going down in settings.

[singing] Gonna write a song about makin' the noodles!

Then I would fold the dough over on itself,

and then start again from the widest possible setting.

And then you're gonna work it all the way down

until you could see your hand through the dough.

[Emily] Look at that hand skin.

Straight through the noodle.

Now roll it through your pasta cutter

to cut fine little lo mein shape.

Ah.

I got beautifully toasted dinner rolls.

We're gonna make them into a similar consistency

as our cut-up bacon.

[roller banging]

And I'm gonna combine it with our bacon.

I'm gonna add a little bit of black pepper,

toss everything together,

and this is my bacon crumble.

Now it's time to bring my garlic-butter lo mein together.

It's a little stressful, but you wish me luck, right, buddy?

Good luck, Emily!

Salt into my pasta water, oil into my pan, garlic.

And then I'm going to just grab some noods.

Fresh pasta cooks super quickly,

just about two to three minutes.

[Emily] Give this a stir.

So it looks like Emily gave me some corn here.

I think she was gonna do corn on the cob.

I'm gonna use it to make a cheddar corn pudding.

First, gotta peel the corn.

You just kind of wanna rub the silk off here.

Yes, I know.

Keep your mind outta the gutter. [chuckles]

I'm going to use a box grater.

This is gonna create kind of a corn pulp.

We're extracting some of the juices and the starch here.

You wanna get all the kernels here,

but obviously you don't want tough, inedible cob bits

in your pudding.

Making the big move.

Whoop. [noodles sizzle]

Give that a little stir.

I'm going to go scallions, Parm, butter,

itty-bitty bit of soy sauce.

Oyster sauce. There we go.

Little bit of pasta water.

[pan scraping]

I feel like this is starting to look

like an emulsification, which is what we want.

Well, that was stressful, but I think we did it.

I'm adding this to our medium pot here.

I'm just gonna cook this over medium heat

while it's constantly stirring.

So while my corn is heating up, I'm gonna dice butter.

Get my dairy ready here.

Add a pinch of salt, butter.

Go little by little here. I could always add more.

I'm gonna add some sour cream.

A little tang is nice.

And then we're gonna finish with our cheese.

So it's kind of like fresh grits, almost. Little pepper.

Now that we're happy with our seasoning,

we're gonna add cheese.

Lobster and corn go well together

'cause of the shared sweetness.

All right, there we have it.

Cheddar corn pudding.

All right, my oil is at 375,

and I'm ready to fry some lobster.

So I have some corn starch. Wee.

And then I'm gonna use it to dredge my lobster pieces,

which I'm gonna fry for, like, less than a minute.

And just give it a in we go.

So for another garnish, I'm going to make some chive oil

from these chives Emily sent me.

It adds a lot of beautiful allium aroma,

and this beautiful emerald color as well.

We're gonna use the whole thing. No waste here.

So just cutting it into manageable chunks for the blender.

I'm gonna combine them with some neutral cooking oil.

[blender whirring]

And then I'm going to cook this oil

over medium heat while whisking.

We just want for it to boil for about 30 seconds to a minute

to deactivate all the enzymes.

That way it won't turn brown.

I've spent hours and hours of my life

cutting beautiful chives

and having my sous chef throw them away

because they weren't pretty enough, in his opinion.

It's a really neat distillation of the fun of fine dining.

I'm just gonna boil this for like 30 seconds

to deactivate the enzymes,

and then we're gonna go immediately into ice.

If you don't stop the cooking, it's going to brown.

And then I'm gonna strain it through a coffee filter.

And then you let it sit for a little bit,

and it will separate between solids and oil.

And then you'll have a beautiful emerald of chive oil.

So my chive oil has been sitting for some time,

and we're gonna put it in a squeeze bottle,

and save it for finishing our dish later.

These only need, like, less than a minute.

I'm just waiting to see them turn red,

which they already are starting to do.

[oil sizzling] One, two.

No corn starch on this. Just going straight in.

They're just gonna be decorative.

[oil sizzles]

[laughs] Look at that.

I'm gonna mount that on the wall at my cabin.

I don't have a cabin, but when I do!

Fanned-out lobstertail, and 45 seconds again.

Look at that, it's already red. It literally takes a second.

Look at that.

All right, lobster fried.

In addition to my chive oil,

I'm gonna save some chives to garnish with.

I'm gonna wrap up the chives here

in a little bit of a paper towel.

Just trim the bare ends.

Cutting chives is a whole thing.

There have been a lot tears cried over it.

No conjoined chives allowed.

The most important thing to me

is that they remain proportional.

Oh, pretty good. Not bad. A minus.

So now I'm gonna make my lobster sauce.

Oil all over the place.

Guanciale into the pan.

And we're just gonna, like, let this render a little,

get it a kind of of a light brown.

The next thing is scallions and ginger.

Shaoxing wine.

And when you're cooking with a wok,

you want to be adding sauces towards the edges of the wok.

That way they have just a second

to lightly reduce and evaporate.

Smells good already, honestly.

So we're in the home stretch here.

It is time to grill my lobster.

Lobster cuisson here.

This has butter in it, as you remember.

And all that reduced intensified lobster flavor.

And we're gonna grill.

Next up, I'm gonna add my chicken stock.

Oops, sorry.

Cane sugar, chicken bouillon powder, white pepper,

two teaspoons of salt, I think.

And give that a stir.

Lobster sauce. Lobster sauce. Lobster sauce. Right?

All right, we got some serious bubbling happening.

I'm gonna add my cornstarch slurry, and lower the heat.

Slurries are a really key component of Asian cooking.

Slurry is just a mixture of pure starch and water.

They're a great way to add viscosity to dishes.

[slurps] Ooh, it's got that guanciale flavor. It's salty.

I think my sauce is sufficiently thickened. And lobster in.

[Eric] I'm looking for a little bit of char.

Probably not gonna get too much in terms of grill lines,

but just so that cuisson is caramelized and brown.

That's what I'm really looking for.

That's it. You don't wanna go overboard. It's not a steak.

So, I don't wanna like totally beat this egg.

I just wanna break everything apart,

and just try to make little ribbons of egg.

And I'm just gonna cook this for 30 seconds.

I feel like an Olympic athlete,

but for making lobster sauce. [chuckles]

I'm ready to plate.

[percussive beat]

We're ready to plate. We have all the things.

My cheddar corn pudding, potatoes.

Just a few of these. We don't wanna go crazy.

So first, I'm gonna try to, like,

do the fancy noodle thing.

Make sure my lobster pieces are saucy.

You are my crowning glory.

[Eric] One beautiful grilled lobster claw.

And then we're gonna take our tail out the shell.

Now it has this beautiful grilled flavor.

Little clusters of bacon crumble.

We wanna show off the lobster.

Don't want to cover it up.

[Emily] Next step, reduction,

crispy fried shallots, and scallion.

And now I'm just going to put a head and tail on it.

Then some chive oil.

And last but not least,

all these chives we worked so hard for

just to add a pop of color.

And here's my grilled lobster with cheddar corn pudding,

extra crispy potatoes, and bacon crumble.

And this is my take on Chef Eric's recipe.

I hope Emily likes it.

I can't wait to see what she's done with my recipe.

I wonder what he did with my ingredients.

[Eric chuckles]

Hey, how's it going? Hello.

Good to see you. Nice to see to see you.

I am very curious to see

what's under this little hat. [chuckles]

I am excited to hear

what you think of what's under there. [chuckles]

Wow! Ah!

Ooh! Hey!

Your shallots look great.

Oh, thank you. [laughs] [Eric laughs]

That's a good start. [laughs]

That was the hardest part, I think.

[Emily] What did you do here?

This looks incredible. [laughs]

[chuckles] I grilled the lobster.

I made a little bit of a corn pudding

from the corn you gave me.

Yeah.

Some extra crispy potatoes, bacon crumble,

and really nice green chive oil to make it pop.

It looks... Can we dig in?

Yes, let's please.

Your tail. A little tail. Why not?

All right.

[whimsical music]

Mm. It's so good.

All right. I'm glad you like it.

I gotta tell you,

growing up I only ever had boiled lobster.

Mm. Grilled lobster,

it takes to grilling, and it's good!

It does taste the grilling quite well.

[Emily] Mm-hm. I'm sold.

How did you make a corn pudding?

If you grate corn on a box grater,

and you extract kind of the starch from the cob,

you can just cook it in a pot,

and it will thicken on its own.

Yeah.

Lobster's still the star of the show,

but everything is delicious.

Oh, thank you. It's amazing.

Would you like to try what I made today?

Absolutely. I would love to.

I mean, it genuinely looks beautiful.

It's supposed to look like a lobster,

but not like a lobster.

Yeah, like a lobster kind of exploded in the middle,

Yeah. But in a beautiful way.

[both laugh]

Exploded into noodles.

Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Exactly.

Shallots let's look lovely.

I was pretty proud of them.

Let's see here. Get, like, some noodles.

[whimsical music]

That is delightful!

Yeah! Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Delightful.

Noodles are very bouncy, delightfully chewy.

Thank you.

Seasoning's great.

The crispy shallots,

that part, you know, not gonna lie, I was a little worried

because I've messed that up so many times in my life.

Well, I had nothing else to do

at the same time. [chuckles]

I love garlic butter noodles,

and they're challenging because they,

you have to get the dough right, obviously.

But the seasoning is tough

because all those things are so salty and umami.

Yeah.

It's very easy to go overboard.

Yeah, yeah. That was my one concern.

I was like, Is this too salty?

It's great, though.

You nailed the seasoning. I think it's right there.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think the lobster's great.

Not overcooked, just right.

The coating of the sauce is very luscious.

The viscosity is correct,

and that's exactly what you're going for.

And then, hey,

just make a big old mess with the shell here,

and it's kind of fun, you know?

Yeah. You did a wonderful job.

[chuckles] Oh, stop. Really.

Keep 'em comin'. Keep 'em comin'.

[both laughing] [music fades]